Week long series documenting an investigation they've been doing for the past year. It follows on the heels of earlier investigations by the Miami Herald and St Pete Times that documented that convicted felons were allowed to get real estate licenses during the bubble years and that drug dealers were using real estate flipping to launder drug money.
The whole series is worth reading this week, but I'll excerpt one part. Hey, these guys were just in the business of making money, amirite?
As part of the Herald-Tribune's year-long investigation into property flipping fraud, the newspaper interviewed Adams' former business partners and analyzed land deeds, mortgage documents and other records related to his real estate deals. The investigation found that for more than a decade, Adams used a network of professional associates and a stable of regular buyers to control every aspect of his real estate flips.
Instead of selling properties to outside buyers, he created a real estate market where his hand-picked buyers and sellers could set the price they wanted, and repeated flips made Adams hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate sales commissions.
In some cases, Adams and his associates bought a house, marked up the price and quickly sold it to another associate for more than it was worth. Using the inflated sale price, they qualified for a mortgage that more than covered the actual purchase, then divided the remaining cash among themselves, according to seven people familiar with the deals.
Ick...watching all those house flipping shows, this should come as no surprise. Some of those goons were downright scum. Especially in South Florida...they were just the worst.
“The Knave abideth.” I dare speak not for thee, but this maketh me to be of good comfort; I deem it well that he be out there, the Knave, being of good ease for we sinners.
I'd be curious to see what kind of laws they broke. I wonder how much of this was allowed to go on since everyone figured, hey, good for the local economy, right?
I've never met a retarded person who wasn't smiling.
And aa, if you go through the whole series, it basically says there won't be that many arrests because the cops claim it's too hard to prove they were committing fraud, even though the reporters on the series were able to go through the records and show these guys were doing things like buying a house and then turning around and selling it to a buddy for 100 grand more just a few days later. That kind of fraud seems pretty obvious to me.
That doesn't surprise me one bit a1...I figured that would be the cops' response.
I love that the cops can't keep up with real criminals....they have to devote their resources where they get enough arrests for the buck to protect their funding...and this is why the system is failing miserably...and why the government struggles to administer real justice these days. It's more about bureaucracy and budget than it is about justice. Is it any wonder I'm anti-government?
I've never met a retarded person who wasn't smiling.
